1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disk drive and, more particularly, to an optical disk drive which can be installed horizontally or vertically.
2. Description of the Related Art
An optical disk drive is a device for writing or reading information by irradiating light onto a disk-shaped optical medium (hereinafter called a disk) such as a compact disk (CD) or a digital video disk (DVD).
FIG. 1 is a plan view of one example of a conventional optical disk drive and FIG. 2 is a schematic sectional view of the conventional optical disk drive of FIG. 1 taken along line I–I′.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, a tray 20 is slidably installed in a frame 10. The frame 10 includes a spindle motor 31 for rotating a disk 50, and a deck 30 having an optical pickup 32 for accessing the disk while sliding above the disk. The deck 30 is installed under the tray 20 and is able to ascend or descend. A loading motor 13 for loading or unloading the tray 20 is also installed in the frame 10. A cover 40 with a clamp 41 is provided above the frame 10.
When the disk 50 is mounted on a first loading surface 21 of the tray 20 and then the loading motor 13 is rotated, the tray 20 slides in the direction A shown in FIG. 1. When the loading of the tray 20 is completed, the deck 30 is lifted. A bottom 51 of the disk 50 comes into contact with a turntable 34 on the rotation shaft of the spindle motor 31, and the disk 50 is lifted with the deck 30. When the clamp 41 makes contact with a top surface 52 of the disk 50, the turntable 34 and the clamp 41 support the disk 50. Here, the disk 50 is slightly moved upward from the first loading surface 21, as shown in FIG. 2. In this situation, as the spindle motor 31 rotates the disk 50, the optical pickup 32 slides in a radial direction of the disk 50 and accesses the disk 50 so as to write and/or read information. The procedure of unloading the disk 50 is carried out in the reverse order of its loading.
The optical disk drive is usually installed horizontally as shown in FIG. 1. However, recently, the optical disk dive is frequently installed vertically as shown in FIG. 3. If the optical disk drive is vertically installed, a catch 23 extending slightly upward from the first loading surface 21 is provided as also shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, to prevent the disk 50 from falling or separating from the first loading surface 21 after being loaded. Since the disk 50 contacts only the turntable 34 in the ascending section (D1 of FIG. 2) from the moment when the bottom 51 of the disk 50 comes into contact with the turntable 34 to the moment when the top surface 52 of the disk 50 comes into contact with the clamp 41, the disk 50 may be possibly detached from the turntable 34 when vertically installed.
Usually, the disk 50 has a diameter of 120 mm. However, recently a disk 60 with a diameter of 80 mm has been largely used. As shown in FIG. 4, in order to load the disk 60, the tray 20 has a second loading surface 22 lower than the first loading surface 21. When the disk 60 is loaded in a vertically installed optical disk drive, the disk 60 may fall or separate from the second loading surface 22 during loading of the tray 20. Since the second loading surface 22 is lower than the first loading surface 21, the ascending section D2, from the moment when a bottom 61 of the disk 60 contacts the turntable 34 to the moment when a top surface 62 of the disk 60 comes into contact with the clamp 41, is longer than the ascending section D1 of the disk 50 having a diameter of 120 mm. For this reason, it is highly possible that the disk 60 separates from the turntable 34 before coming into contact with the clamp 41.